Mars Odyssey Releases First Data Archive to Scientists

NASA has released the first set of data taken by the Mars Odyssey spacecraft to the Planetary Data System, which will now make the information available to research scientists through a new online distribution and access system. “This release is a major milestone for Mars scientists worldwide, since the first validated data from our instruments are now available to the entire scientific community,” said Dr. R. Stephen Saunders, the Odyssey project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “There are fundamentally new kinds of information in these data sets, including day and night infrared images, maps of hydrogen in the soil, and radiation hazard data for future Mars missions.”